a friend of mine cleaned his MAF with some carb cleaner. . . . is it just me or does this not seem very smart? i thought it was too delicate to do that to. . . anyway, he said it made a difference. i have no idea lol.

 

I've read up here that some guy dipped his into a bag full of alcohol in order to clean it. And he was successful. I don't think I would ever do that to a $400+ part. I am not going to even touch mine. And I'm going to hope it lasts me a lifetime.

 

Okay, you can tell them it was me. I sprayed a Q-tip with carb-cleaner and carefully wiped down the filament. It's not like a light bulb filament, it's fairly thick. It eliminated the erratic idle and hesitation under 3000RPM. My AAC valve just started to go though so that was obviously contributing, but cleaning it definitely helped. Just make sure you allow PLENTY of time for the stuff to dry. I cannot stress that enough. You might smell a slight burning smell otherwise, not that it's much to worry about. That was over two months ago. No major problems stemmed from it.
-Justin

 

You should onyl clean it with denatured alcohol or electrical contact cleaner.

carb cleaner will get the gunk off, but it will leave deposits itself. electrical contact cleaner won't. alcohol won't.

the MAF sensor is a small electronic sensor (obviously). it's not a carbouretor or throttle body, or brake parts. you should not use carb/TB/Brake cleaner on it.

 

It's "carburetor" BTW. Thanks for the advice, but it's a little late. It worked though. My idle was much more stable and the hesitation at low RPM's was all but gone. I recently confirmed that the remainder of the problem was caused by my AAC valve dying. I may try alco. if I ever get an intake and break open my intake tract and airbox again.

 

hehe.. well my speeling is bettur then most peeple's arund hear. I'm allowd to make a fwe mis stakes.


the rest of that post was general info for the rest of the people out there who might consider doing this.
(FYI, I've done it on three different MAF sensors and never had a problem with any of them.)

 

where did you buy your acc valve and how much for it?
I think mine its dead too

 

what the aac valve? is that the other intake tube?

 

AAC = Auxilary Air Cut
IACV = Idle Air Control Valve

On our VG30E SOHC engines, the AAC valve and IACV are sandwiched together. The IACV controls idle speed and regulates air flow into the engine when the throttle is closed. The AAC valve turns the air flow path to the IACV either on or off. They don't fail very often, and are pretty well engineered.

Some people need to realize that unstable idling can be caused by something as simple as a vacuum leak, which can be difficult to locate on our old cars.

-Kaleb